Hacking exposes holes in officers Web security

Incident seems to have prompted investigation into group Anonymous

Updated 12:18 am, Saturday, September 3, 2011

A cyber-attack on the email accounts of Texas police chiefs revealed the vulnerability even of the state's top cops and appears to have prompted a new investigation into a notorious hacking group.

The stealthy group known as Anonymous claimed responsibility for "Texas Takedown Thursday." The email accounts of 25 members of the Texas Police Chiefs Association were compromised and their contents posted online.

Anonymous explained it was attacking Texas law enforcement officials "as they continue to harass immigrants and use border patrol operations as a cover for their backwards racist prejudice."

"While many of our comrades facing charges and in prison are innocent, there is no such thing as an innocent police officer, and we will continue to directly attack the prison-industrial complex by leaking their private data, destroying their systems, and defacing their websites," Anonymous stated online.

The group placed 3 gigabytes of emails on a hidden server and posted the contents, which included racist emails to or from officers.

Among the first to be scrutinized was a message purportedly recovered from the trash basket of Friendswood Police Chief Bob Wieners' Yahoo account more than three years ago. Under the subject line "Stupid Bitch," the email disparaged the race, gender and intelligence of a woman killed in a police car chase.

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"That stupid bitch who started that stolen car chase at Yale and 610 got what she deserved (I'll bet she was fat and black too)," it said.

While it appears to be from Wieners, the chief told the Chronicle he never wrote it.

"I was not the creator of that email and I was not the creator of any improper emails," Wieners said. "I'm not happy about my personal email being hacked as well as my work email being hacked. It was done as the result of illegal activity."

He said he received the email in 2008 and deleted it.

AG office: No comment

Asked late Friday if the breach would be pursued as a criminal matter, Jerry Strickland, a spokesman for Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, replied, "We can't comment on an ongoing investigation."

Philip Hilder, a Houston defense attorney and former federal prosecutor, said the group's members could be prosecuted under Texas or federal laws prohibiting unauthorized access to computer systems.

"I think it just underscores how fast technology is moving and that really it seems that no system is above a potential breach," Hilder said.

James McLaughlin, executive director of the Texas Police Chiefs Association, said his group discovered its website had been hacked about 7:30 p.m. Thursday. That was hours after Anonymous had gone into the website and apparently accessed the membership list, which contained personal and in some cases professional email messages of members.

By the time McLaughlin's group was aware of the attack, some police chiefs had been notified their messages had been stolen and posted by friends and colleagues.

Thursday's cyber break-in raises questions about Texas law enforcement's preparedness when it comes to Internet security.

'Just bizarre'

Not all police chiefs received official notice of what had occurred. Alejandro Sanchez, police chief in the West Texas town of Clint, found out about it from a Houston Chronicle reporter Friday.

Others appeared to learn about the breach from friends or computer experts who saw Anonymous' statement and the personal information about officers the group posted online.

Mock, who retired from HPD as a lieutenant in January 2008, said the hackers got into a personal email account he had maintained for years.

"They put all my information out there - and not only mine, my wife and my kids,'' Mock said, referring to information including birthdates and Social Security numbers. "This whole thing is just bizarre.''